The Plan

Pension cliffs, over-assessment of property, flooding, and failing infrastructure are all issues that must be addressed. But there are no short-term solutions. The way for Detroit to reach its full potential and lead the nation is to stabilize our neighborhoods and grow our population. To accomplish this, we must elect new leaders who share the experiences of those they serve.

In doing that, we will also accomplish the following three things:

Make Detroit Clean
  1. Employ youth year-round to lead a campaign and efforts to keep garbage out of the neighborhoods and off the streets.
  2. Reward residents and businesses for above-and-beyond efforts to keep the neighborhoods clean.
  3. Implement a Clean Neighborhoods Initiative including real milestones for improvement while enhancing enforcement against environmental offenders.
  4. Water: This is a human right. Permanently end water shut-offs, end inequitable tax captures, and pass a millage to structure a permanent water affordability plan for residents.
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Make Detroit Safe
  1. COVID
    • Vaccination: Continue coordinated efforts to accommodate those who choose to be immunized at the quickest rate possible.
    • Social: Fund community-based research partnerships between residents, practitioners, and universities to develop strategies for assisting the public in dealing with pandemic fatigue. Residents will have research resources available to them to figure out how to make it easier for people to continue wearing their masks, watching their distance, and washing their hands even as we yearn for the world to return to normal.
  2. Children & Youth
    • Girls: Fund initiatives to support the development of cis- and transgenred girls, especially as they approach puberty and contend against sexual and other violent crimes against them.
    • Introduce initiatives to combat youth homelessness.
  3. Justice
    • Detroit Reentry: Leverage partnership with the state to gain access to every incarcerated person returning to Detroit in order to connect them to the community and family, to new career opportunities, and to useful social skills such as dance or public speaking so they may return home as contributing leaders.
    • Eliminate Shootings and other Violence: Fund comprehensive initiative which coordinates cooperation among mentorship programs while connecting young people to enterprising opportunities and using media art to confront narratives that celebrate violence.
  4. Law Enforcement
    • Neighborhood-based policing:
      • Demilitarize and desegregate the police force.
      • Institute Neighborhood Peace Officers who are trained in conflict resolution. They are to be selected by local residents and may live in the neighborhoods they serve in subsidized housing.
      • Implement regular workshops and training to help officers understand and act through a racial justice lens.
      • Fund community-led neighborhood safety projects and initiatives.
    • Drugs:
      • Champion discontinuation of the lingering and devastatingly misguided War on Drugs. Decriminalize drug use in order to focus on treatment and education and to redirect law enforcement toward the elimination of reckless driving, gun violence, and crimes against the environment so that families can live in clean and safe neighborhoods.
      • Improve the cannabis legalization movement by embarking on a robust campaign to educate young people on the adverse effects of marijuana usage and to help them take advantage of all aspects of the industry as entrepreneurs.
  5. Traffic
    • Speed: Champion the installation of speed humps on residential streets and direct law enforcement to prioritize safe driving.
Make Detroit Prosperous
  1. Reparations Funds
    • The legacy of slavery; Jim Crow; discriminatory housing, investment, and lending practices; mass incarceration; and upsidedown government support forcing Detroiters to subsidize the lives of citizens in surrounding cities creates a glaring wealth disparity that can only begin to be corrected through equitable investment into the Black community. Create a reparations fund to be financed by industries having caused unquestioning harm to the communities of Detroit.
  2. Contracts
    • A thriving community circulates its dollar. Ensure that over 90% of the contractors with which the city of Detroit does business is a Detroit-based company. Create programs to strengthen the capacity of locally owned business to do business with the city.
  3. Housing
    • Home ownership is one of the surest ways to build wealth over time. Make renovation of homes more affordable through the coordination of bulk purchases to reduce the cost of building material.
    • Reinstitute Community Development Block Grants (not loans) for the repairing of homes.
    • End Tax-based foreclosures for residents.
    • Institute a local affordability model so that income levels are based on Detroit income and not the AMI of surrounding cities.
  4. Neighborhood-based Employment Opportunities
    • Work with unions to enlist non-credentialed skilled trade workers from the neighborhoods in the rehabbing of the homes around them. This can create opportunities in the neighborhoods while also bringing down the cost of renovations for the homeowners.
  5. Youth
    • Learning & Recreation: Increase safe recreational and community-based learning activities for young people.
    • Jobs: Extend programs like Grow Detroit’s Young Talent to offer year-round job opportunities for youth to help make Detroit clean and safe.
    • Mentoring: Institute a Young N Mature cross mentoring program whereby teenagers and seniors exchange skills for helping one another navigate the changing world.
    • Education: Institute an office of education to coordinate partnerships with school systems, other public agencies, the philanthropic community and the media to promote safe, creative and equity-informed learning that is responsive to the needs of individual students while also promoting their collective positive identity.
  6. Local Business
    • Support the development of locally-owned businesses able to contract with the city and create new local jobs and millionaires.
    • Support fresh food grocers and other ventures enriching the health and culture of Detroit.
  7. Neighborhood-based Governance
    • Bring City Hall to the streets so that everyday folks have regular access to the officials representing them and so officials share some of the experiences of residents. Convert small homes in each district to offices where officials conduct regular business, including meetings with investors and other business stakeholders in order to inspire development plans in the neighborhoods.